You Reap What You Sow

I've never given much thought about organization until I need to find something and can't. I've always operated on the "I generally know where it is" approach to life and that has been a bad idea and it really demonstrates my immaturity. Today I went to go get my marriage licence and if you are married you know that it requires some particular documents. Documents that I had trouble finding because of my lack of organization. This slowed down the whole process and ended up hurting my fiance, because since this is something we had to do together she wasted some of her time because of my laziness in organizing my files. As I said earlier this demonstrated that I was immature in this area, but let me tell you I have learned my lesson now. I sowed disorganization and I reaped a longer process for doing a relatively simple task. The principle of sowing and reaping is one that is clearly taught in scripture. It is just basic wisdom, however if you are anything like me, these little decisions that I make each day and don't think about add up to a big frustration. I am fortunate that I was able to find what I needed in time, but if I couldn't then this would have taken even more time, and that would not have been good for anyone. As Christians I think we can allow our spiritual life to also get disorganized. If we do not continue to reflect on our faith, and continue to learn about our savior and do not have regular time in His word, then when life hits us with any number of issues we are not able to find what we need to approach them from a biblical worldview, and if we continue to neglect the word of God then our worldview which we claim is Christian could in fact have nothing to do with what God has said in His word. Instead what we end up with is a confused mess of inconsistent ethics and ideas and we continue down that road we become susceptible to the lies of this world. When we buy into the lies of this world we get wrapped up in all manner of sin that is hurtful to others, self destructive and most of all offensive towards God. This demonstrates a spiritual immaturity on our part when we do this, and in some cases it can demonstrate unbelief. So what do we do when we realize that we have allowed ourselves to become lazy in our spiritual lives? Well we repent and trust in Jesus, the one who has saved us from our sins, and we look to the time when God did not give us what we sowed, He visited that upon Christ, and we look to all that we will reap not because of our righteousness, but because of Jesus' righteousness. I've had to repent of the sin of laziness in regards to my disorganization just like I have had to repent of many other sins that have committed knowing full well that they were wrong. Perhaps you find yourself in similar shoes as I, or perhaps you feel like you have done worse, no matter how big or how small your sin is, there is forgiveness in Jesus Christ when we repent of our sins, and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of them. This is what the Christian life looks like until Jesus returns. Paul talks about this in Romans 7. Paul states that he does the things he doesn't want to do, and doesn't do the things he knows he should, but then at the end of the chapter he thanks God for Jesus Christ who will deliver him from this sinful body. You see, a believer's life is filled with repenting of sin and trusting in Jesus. Christians must have both. It is important for the development of a believer to continue to confess and repent of their sins as they learn more about the character of God through His word, but it is also important that we continue to trust that through Christ alone we are saved. We are not saved because of how many sins we confess, we confess our sins knowing that God is good to forgive them because of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. We repent because we understand how our sins hurt ourselves and others and offend God. Repentance and trust in Christ, that is the key to the Christian life. It is something that I am learning more about day after day. What do you think? Are you an organized person, or do you struggle with that? Are you trusting in Christ for the forgiveness of sins? Comment below and let me know.